


Caution

by nyctanthes



Series: 1985 was a good year [2]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: A great deal of backstory, BAMF Joyce Byers, Coming of Age, F/M, For Lack Of A Better Term, Gen, Implied/Referenced Emotional Abuse, Joyce Byers POV, Not Fluff, Parent-Child Relationship, Set between S2 & S3, Sibling Love, Very brief mentions of drug use, Word count: 12K, inter-generational stuff, just life, not angst, parenting, the long shadow of emotional abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-07 20:29:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20981909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyctanthes/pseuds/nyctanthes
Summary: What she has learned: that in many ways your life works out, though not how you expected, hoped for and planned.She'd like to explain this to Jonathan. She's not sure he'll listen.





	Caution

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know where this came from. But here it is. I love the Byers, and after writing this, I really like Bob Newby. 
> 
> The tags for "implied/referenced emotional abuse" and "the long shadow of emotional abuse" refer to Lonnie and Joyce's relationship, as well Lonnie's relationship with his kids. Not graphic, but sad all the same.

"I guess he and my mother loved each other at some point, but I wasn't around for that part."

\- _The Flea and the Acrobat_

"And I hope it's not wishful thinking, but I kinda feel like I'm breaking through with them. Not so much Jonathan. He's a tough cookie to crack, but yeah."

\- _The Pollywog_

"I knew how easily it could happen, the past at hand, like the helpless cognitive slip of an optical illusion. The tone of a day linked to some particular item: my mother's chiffon scarf, the humidity of a cut pumpkin. Certain patterns of shade. Even the flash of sunlight on the hood of a white car could cause a momentary ripple in me, allowing a slim space of return."

\- _The Girls_, Emma Cline

_______________________

It happened when she wasn’t paying attention, she was looking the other way. Her child cracked open his ribs, pulled out his heart and gave it to her. Just like that.

She hears _Mike’s sister, Barb’s friend_. “She came to me for help, and we tried to kill it. We hurt it for Will, for you. We helped, I know we did. I saw the lights. We slowed it down, gave you and Hopper time to find him.”

Then nothing. Nothing but months of tip-toeing around Will, showing concern but never too much concern. She looks through his journal. The doctors say he probably suffers from _delayed trauma_, like someone who’s come home from war. Has she considered _art therapy_ , so he can express what he can’t in words. She pretends not to notice as day after day, week after week Will picks at his dinner, his favorite foods made just the way he likes, and complains they "smell funny" or "taste like cardboard." They're "hard to swallow_."_ Neon warning signs, hot and red, blink and blink, but he sulks and bristles if anyone dares mention them. He resents being treated like the child he is.

“I’m _fine_,” he yelps, bowl cut framing a fine boned, pixie face pale with terror that he’s not, blinking back tears when she forgets herself, asks one question too many. She flutters hands near her face, like she’s shaking water off them, shooing gnats away. She leaves him be.

It’s the last thing she wants. How is it possible, to worry but not show it? To feel things, sadness and anxiety and fear, so much fear, love and concern and hope, yet keep them hidden from those closest to you? She’s seen that other mothers manage it, she’s been told they do. But when has she been one of those mothers? Someone who consents to burying a rotting dressmaker’s doll in place of her missing baby. A woman who returns a traumatized child to the maniacs who abused her because a man in a dark suit tells her down is up and black is white.

Then nothing. Nothing but months during which Jonathan stays home as much as possible, watches Will’s every move but pretends not to. Months when he openly glares at Bob and drops passive aggressive suggestions that he go home and never return_,_ refuses to be anything other than the narrowest definition of _polite._

“You can do better, Mom. You deserve better,” he replies early on, only a couple of dates in. They’re cleaning the breakfast dishes and she asks him - to acknowledge what’s happening, before his words have the capacity to hurt her - what he thinks of Bob, of her seeing him. After years a man in her life, a man at their front door who doesn’t alternate threats with whines and wheedles. Doesn’t hammer on it, growling, “C’mon Joyce, let me in. I didn’t mean it…”

She stifles a frown and flicks his arm with the dish towel. “Oh, Jonathan. Be nice.”

He says it with a straight face. “I _am_ being nice.” 

“No, I couldn’t do better. No, I don’t deserve better.” She doesn’t say it. Jonathan would refuse to understand. He’s young and judgmental, with black and white notions - this is “right” and that is “wrong”; these people, and there are so few of them, are “interesting” and the rest are “a waste of my time” _-_ that might be a long time changing, might be a permanent character trait. He gets it from his father. 

Then nothing. Nothing but work and home, work and home and bills bills bills, a simulacrum of normal life. Until on a Tuesday in late September, windows open, trees putting on their coats of many colors, a welcome chill in the air, she hoists herself free from the depths of a nightmare: gasping, heart pounding, crying out. _Will_. _Will Will Will_. _He’s not right, something’s not right. That monster. That monster still wants him. But I won’t let it take him. I’ll kill it._ _I’ll burn this town to the ground before I let it take him again._

It wasn’t real. Will’s safe. It’s over. She chants it, her mantra, as she goes back to sleep, stands at the register, fruitlessly tidies the house. Pushes that boulder up the hill only to see, when she’s returned from her shift, that it’s rolled right back to the bottom. She does all this even as part of her knows, the sharp and instinctive, perpetually moving part of her that immediately - and this time is no different -takes her concerns to Hopp that she’s only escaped from the bad dream tucked within the nightmare. Like those nested dolls with their blank, painted smiles. One inside the other inside the other. Her uncle gave her a set, when he visited Hawkins in 1948. It was the first time she met him, the black sheep of the family. Tall, confident and tanned darker than she'd ever seen, she didn't know white people could get so dark. Mahogany, with craggy hands and sly eyes. Hejoined the Merchant Marine out of high school, after that was seldom heard from. Somehow made it through the War intact. Who knows how he got his sea-faring notions in land-locked Southern Indiana. The Atlantic Ocean, the Southern California beaches as exotic, as faraway as Calcutta, Shanghai and Lisbon.

"He was always like that," mother said. "Adventurous and restless. A dreamer."

“Babushka dolls. A mommy and hersevenchildren. Can you imagine having that many?”

“Bill, that’s not very patriotic of you. Are you allowed to buy these,” mother worried. Wringing her apron, voice dropping to a whisper. _What if someone sees them. They could get the wrong idea about us. _Wispy and tentative, hyper-focused on appearances. Greying, thinning hair still kept long and in a silver dollar sized bun, pulled skin tight with strips of pink scalp visible. Her face perpetually, faintly surprised. 

“Are those your grandparents?” she and Judy were asked, on more than one occasion. She wondered. Only a handful of photographs of their babyhoods, and nothing from the earliest days.

“We didn’t think about it. Who had money for that, or the time. We were focused on bigger things.”

“We must be adopted,” she said to Judy one night, when they were snuggled together in her bed. She never slept well by herself. “Our real parents are young, beautiful and exciting. _Dashing_. Maybe they're spies, were fighting Hitler or Mussolini and got captured. They're waiting to be rescued. Waiting to be rescued _by us._” But Judy, half asleep, having heard dozens of variations on this theme, only tetchily replied, “I’d remember. If we had other parents.”

“Not if we were young enough.”

More severely now. “We live in a small town that loves nothing but gossip. Don’t you think someone would have told us about our real parents, our Nick and Nora parents if we had them?”

She preferred to think of them as Rick and Ilsa, but maintained her own counsel. When Judy pinched, she didn't hold back. 

Uncle Bill laughed at mother’s seriousness, her wan scolding. “What’s the harm. They’re peasants, like us. Doing what they’re told, not getting paid for it. Do you think they got pensions and benefits, for their part in the war effort?”

Mother chastised her for wordlessly snatching her gift from his hands. She eked out a strained, “Thank you.” Grimacing, not bothering to hide her reluctance she stood on tip-toes and pecked the barest kiss on his dried apple, beef jerky cheek.

“She’s very pretty, though her manners could use some work,” Uncle Bill said with a grin, as if she weren’t standing between the two of them, listening to their every word. But her mother only sighed. “We’re working on that. She never listens. Who knows where she goes, in that head of hers.”

She played with them, her shiny new dolls and almost immediately knew there was something wrong with them. What appealed to others - their simplistic, cunning nature, their uniformity that was in reality conformity, a family where everyone marched in a straight line, one after the other after the other - was not for her.

She lined them up on her side of the room, on the rag rug. Not littlest to biggest or vice versa. Rather, all mixed up. “They’re not soldiers, or in school. They like to stand wherever they want,” she earnestly argued. “Why do they have to stand the same way every time? Why does the biggest one have to be in charge? The littlest one can’t breathe, inside! She told me she feels sick!” Judy moaned in distress. Without asking, she snatched them up and arranged them on the dresser on her side of their room, in _proper order._ Their room, eight feet by ten feet, twin beds with metal frames. A little window for each of them. Matching sheets, blankets and curtains. A line of tape straight down the middle: a battle field, a balance beam, a border that could be crossed when they were both feeling generous. Or spiteful. 

“You don’t even know how to play with dolls right! What is wrong with you? You are the dumbest little sister ever.”

According to Judy, she never did anything correctly, the way it was _supposed to be done_.

“Done by who?” she asked, seriously. She really wanted to know. She wasn’t, she promised her sister, she _swore on a stack of Bibles_, trying to upset her.

“By everyone! Everyone but you!” Judy screeched or hollered, whined or smacked. Then she magnanimously ordered, “Give it to me. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

They were close in age, and almost the same size. Judy only a little taller than her, a little heavier. They shared the same coloring: a milky-white complexion they pretended not to be proud of, an abundance of dark hair with a natural wave in it. But where she gave the impression of flightiness, unsteadiness, Judy was earthbound and solid. Everyone believed what she said, didn’t matter whether or not it was true. Her sister spoke with authority. Certainty. Her parents, older than everyone else’s parents, prematurely aged by their life, by her and Judy's unexpected presence in their life, early on left her in her sister’s care. They deferred to her. Affectionate but weary, not given to conversation or discussion and Judy so capable and competent, willing to take on adult responsibilities.

From the very beginning, the world was never a mystery to Judy. Early on, she figured out what she needed to understand if she was to succeed in life. Once she obtained the necessary knowledge, she was done learning. It would only slow her down. Not a curious bone in her body. When she felt petty, she thought of Judy as _stolid_, but only in her head, where no one else heard her. Sometimes, she even envied Judy's ability to cut to the heart of the matter. Slice away the fat and gristle, discard what didn’t concern her.

It’s not that she was unfocused. It was just that from the very beginning her concentration manifested in a different way, a little piece of her everywhere. It gave others the impression she wasn't paying attention. But they were wrong, very wrong. She was constantly on the lookout for something that didn't quite fit, that sparked a reaction in her - made her insides flip flop, her instincts speak up, the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

*

Weeks later, a cold and faceless November day. The only color the rusty leaves that lie in heaps near her front door, crackle underfoot. Through the cracks in the windows, the gaps in the floorboards the wind whistles. It howls. The house rocks on its cinder blocks. Will sits in cold bathwater and demands ice, orders her to throw wide open the windows and doors. She holds her face soft, blank while inside she rages and rolls up her sleeves. Once more prepares to do battle with the nightmare.

And Jonathan leaves her a vague note.

_Helping Nancy with an out-of-town project that’ll make us all feel better. Back real soon. Will check in. Promise. _

She brings the paper to her face, until her eyes cross and the letters squirm, and reads it. She stretches her arms out, the letters blur, and she squints, reads it again. Tries and fails to find meaning in the sparseness, a message that keeps her at a distance. Hints _you’re better off not knowing the details…_

She is furious Jonathan has, once again, taken matters into his own hands, put Nancy and himself in danger. He's declined to ask for permission; refused to admit he is still a child. Her child. But ninety-nine days out of a hundred he gives her no trouble, and she has to trust him. It helps that he’s given her no choice.

She consoles herself. What kind of a mother would she be if she relied on a seventeen year old to help her save a twelve year old?

She whispers to herself, almost soft enough to miss it. What kind of a mother does it make her if she doesn’t want his help? She needs someone squarely in her corner, who will trust her and do what they’re told, understands that she has to focus, and the time for questions, skepticism and naysaying is over. Acknowledges that her instincts, the prickle along the back of her neck should always be taken seriously.

If you’d asked her to make a list she never, not in three lifetimes would have put Bob Newby anywhere near the top.

Night falls like a hammer. Only hours later, but it might as well be years. She is no longer the person she was days ago, never again will she be that person. She sits in the back of Jonathan’s car with her baby wrapped in a blanket, slumped across her lap: bird bones, slack body, clammy skin and sweat slick hair. Impossible to believe that something this light, this frail could be harboring a malevolent, other-worldly force. She should be groaning under his weight. She wipes Will’s brow, listens to his barely present inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Jonathan gets directions from Hopp, frantically nods in an effort to keep his panic and his guilt at bay.

And Nancy Wheeler opens the passenger door and slips inside. She smiles at her, small and apologetic as she heaves it shut. “We decided it would be better…I’d be most useful coming with you,” she murmurs. “I think I can help.” Jonathan drives with one hand, and Nancy holds the other quiet on her knee. She offers encouragement. “He’ll be fine, he’ll be fine. You’ll see. It’s a good plan. Your mom is really smart, she knows what she’s talking about, what she’s doing.”

Nancy’s presence, Nancy’s words, Nancy’s hand. The poker Nancy drives into Will’s side to free her from the monster’s hands wrapped around her neck. They register like static on the radio; or when it’s tuned between stations and you hear two songs at once, one on top of the other. But she fiddles with the dial, and it’s back to the child she wants, _needs_ to focus on. As it’s happening, she doesn’t give Nancy another thought.

*

No one except Hopp says it to her face.

_Joyce, you were right. I was wrong._

_Joyce, if you’re crazy, you’re crazy like a fox. We could all learn a thing or two from you. _

_Joyce, the next time something bizarre happens, here in Hawkins, we will come straight to you and ask for your advice. _

Not even Hopp says that last one.

It’s not surprising. Long ago, she stopped expecting more from Hawkins people. People who have not an iota of imagination, refuse to believe that anything exists they can’t see, touch or smell, can’t immediately comprehend. Hawkins people - she’s come to understand that Hawkins people are everywhere; they live in cities, have PhDs and MDs, impressive titles and big government jobs - refuse to believe the unknown, the uncanny should be _allowed_ to exist. They’ve replaced awareness and a sense of wonder, assuming they possessed them in the first place, with _organization _and _housekeeping._ As if living a dollhouse life of mother and father, one boy and one girl, one cat and one dog in a home with a tidy mantle, a kitchen where the counters are forever free of crumbs, evidence anyone uses them, enables them to control the universe, cheat death. Ridiculous. Anyone who continues to think that way as an adult is bound for disappointment, but she knows what they say about her and her capacity to take care of herself, let alone her boys.

*

After she rescues Will the first time, he comes home from the hospital and they’re too soon faced with January. She asks him to show her how to draw a horse. Her horses have always looked like dinosaurs, the ones with impossibly long necks and stubby legs. She’d like to do better. From the hobby store Will brings home a book, _How to Draw Animals_. “This is for beginners. It takes you through the process, step by step. It’s easiest to start with round animals. Maybe a hippo? A sheep or a pig?”

After she rescues Will the second time, she asks Jonathan to bring his record player and speakers out of his bedroom and into the living room. “Only for a week. No more than two!” She puts music on. Not only when she’s trying to teach Will to dance, make him comfortable with an event that fills him with dread. (“Isn’t that what life is, making the best of the hand that’s dealt you,” she doesn’t say.) She puts records on regularly to brighten his mood, all their moods. She digs out her old Dylanalbums. For a few days she rotates, careful to go in chronological order: _Bringing It All Back Home, Nashville Skyline, Blonde on Blonde, Blood on the Tracks, Desire. _She still knows most of the words to Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts. That means something, there are a lot of them. Not like songs today, where all you need to know is the chorus. _I love rock-n-roll/Put another dime in the jukebox, baby. _

She sings off-key, with gusto.  “Backstage the girls were playin' five-card stud by the stairs/Lily had two queens, she was hopin' for a third to match her pair/Outside the streets were fillin' up, the window was open wide/A gentle breeze was blowin', you could feel it from inside/Lily called another bet and drew up the Jack of Hearts…” 

Jonathan scoffs, “He can’t even sing!” Will says nothing. Only concentrates in that careful, long long way he has, when he really wants to understand what she's trying to tell him. He doesn't weigh in until she's completed her overview.

“He’s not bad. Kind of nasal. But the words are pretty cool.”

“Pretty cool! It’s poetry.” Again, she plays him Isis.

“There’s a whole story there, do you hear it? Everything that happens between the words?” For her birthday he draws for her a ghost town on the verge. A sun blasted, ochre and cream, High Plains Drifter landscape, pyramids embedded in ice strung along the horizon.

After Bob dies she buys a puzzle, a thousand pieces, and spreads them across the dining table. They work on it over Thanksgiving, into December, putting their mealtime plates on top of it, careful not to dislodge the completed sections. A New England fall scene. Vermont it says on the box but she decides it’s close enough to believe that it’s Maine, it’s what she would have seen from their kitchen window and their front porch. When they finish, Jonathan glues and frames it. She hangs it in her room, on the wall across from her bed.

It brings her a measure of comfort. Reminds her that everything that’s happened to her has strengthened her, readied her for what came, prepared her for what will surely come again. They've tempered her, like a poker or a sword.

On the days she’s too tired to brown bag it she walks from Melvald’s to the Greek diner and back. On bright days, tranquil and blue, high puffy clouds she parks a few blocks awayand strolls to work. _Slowly slowly, there’s no rush._It’s acceptable to take a few minutes to enjoy the weather, even as she remains vigilant, keeps her peripheral vision wide. 

*

January 1985. It’s much the same as the previous year’s October, November, December. There's temporary dissonance, she fiddle fades and it’s back to the song she needs to focus on. She catalogs, though: a bra in the bathroom, no underwire definitely not hers; lipstick stains on Jonathan’s shirts; the chemical and sweat tinged, too-sweet scent of oranges, lemons and roses. Jonathan’s smiles. They're not pained smiles. _I’m sorry about Bob. I know I’m a jerk for never giving him a chance. Now it’s too late. _Looking for reasons to earn her forgiveness, not that he needs to. She tries to show him that, but she’s not sure he’s listening. Nor are they smiles of relief. _Will is getting better. See, I told you he’d be fine. You worry too much._ _It was ok that I left, yes? I’m sorry about that too. Are you still mad?_ These smiles are just for him. They have nothing to do with her or Will, money or grades or atonement. They’re not akin to throwing salt over his shoulder, keeping the devil from returning to their door.

That’s when she acknowledges it. He is more than sleeping with and dating, more than having the good, responsible time he deserves. He’s finally thrown caution away, and to the last person she would have expected him to considering he’s known her since he was in elementary school and mentioned her half a dozen times in the intervening years.

“Nancy told me to tell you that her mom thought you’d like this casserole recipe. She says the sauce keeps the tuna _really moist_.”

“There were an odd number of people in the class, and I got put with Nancy and Barb on the environmental science project. They want to do something about black lung. I said fine. Didn’t Dad’s cousin Vernon have it? He’s not still alive, is he? They want to talk to him, if he is.”

“I gave Nancy Wheeler a ride home from school today, since it’s on the way. I don’t know, she didn’t have her usual ride I suppose. She must have been desperate. How was it? Awkward. She was staying late for a Girl Scout meeting? I asked her, wasn’t she too old for that and she got all huffy. ‘I’m interested in mentoring! There are good travel opportunities. It’s not like Hawkins is big enough for Model U.N.’” 

He has fallen in love with a _slip of a girl,_ she sounds like her father, who wears a pert, confident smile and the latest designer clothes. A candy bright shell wrapped around a flinty sharp mind. A sense of self that will not be denied.

Looking past the surface flash-bang to what lies underneath, it’s not a trait Nancy learned from her mother. Her first year of high school she heard Karen triumphantly announce - probably to Gina Phelps, they used to be best friends - “I’m going to be a secretary. I’m going to marry my boss. A _man_, someone sophisticated. None of these farm boys for me.”

Twenty-nine years ago she was fully aware Karen wasn’t articulating a particularly bold or original thought. For smart, pretty girls like Karen it was an expected, _applauded_ life plan. Safely ambitious. What surprised her was Karen’s willingness to say it out loud, make a promise before all those who would remember her words and years later remind her of them. Say the words before girls like her, who had only recently, unwillingly put away childish pursuits. Endlessly re-reading Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden mysteries. Feeling warm and fuzzy towards animals. Not just sweet-tempered dogs and mysterious cats, but snakes and birds, even possums. They were nicer than people and would be lovely to work with. They were certainly nicer than boys, who were akin to helping with late summer canning, being called on to speak in class and coming across scary dogs whose owners made them that way: a fact of life. She had to acknowledge their importance, tolerate their presence; but it wasn’t necessary, it wasn’t _possible_ to enjoy them. By the end of seventh grade she had noticed the transformation. The boys had become like the girls: fascinated by themselves, how they looked and smelled. They preened and strutted. Alternated snickering and pointing with staring dumbly - heads swiveling in tandem, a herd of cattle - at the blue-eyed blondes whose clothes clung to the bumps that months ago weren't there.

This year there will be an early spring. February still in the rear view mirror and the ground under her feet lacks resistance. She runs into Karen at the IGA. Karen wears full makeup, high and stiff Aqua Net hair. Carefully creased charcoal pants and a cream colored mohair sweater, underneath it a minty green polo shirt with the collar half-popped. She is dressed in Will’s sneakers, they were by the door and she was in a rush, matching cargo pants and army green jacket. Underneath it is a Cardinals World Series Champions t-shirt. She hasn’t looked directly in the mirror since yesterday morning. She hasn't brushed her hair since yesterday morning.

For the first time in ages they do more than nod friendly hellos, commiserate about Will, ask after Karen’s youngest. Exchange pleasantries on the hoof. In the cereal and cracker aisle they line up their carts, bump them next to each other and from opposite ends chat: about the flowers they’ll plant this year, Karen’s fund-raising for First Methodist (she pointedly doesn’t ask her for a donation), the closing of Benton’s Furniture.

“Such a shame, it’s been here for as long as I can remember. Longer. We bought our first sectional from them.” Karen leans toward her and drops her voice, though no one’s near enough to listen. “I heard Paul, his son, refuses to take over the business. Moved to Toledo, doesn’t want to come back to Hawkins. His wife is from those parts, you know. A city girl. Thinks she’s too good for small town life.”

Before she pushes her cart past her and towards the check out aisle, Karen touches her arm and says, confidingly, “It’s lovely, _wonderful_ to have Jonathan at the house. These days he’s quite the regular visitor. We can hear his car coming up the block!”

She reminds herself, children can be different than their parents. Sometimes.

*

A late Sunday morning and Will isn’t home. She’s not sure where he is, but he’ll make it back safe. She’s made it this far along the path of letting go.

The sugar and red mapletrees are in bud, branchescovered in a fuzz of spring green.The ground is spongey and pungent: warmed by an early April sun rising behind a scrim of cloud. It smells like life, like a new beginning. It’s the kind of weather that tempts her into gardening. From the dollar store on the edge of town she buys a few packets of seeds, a flat of mums, another of pansies and is worn out by the time she plants a handful of flowers in too wet ground.

The sun bakes the top of her head, drips beads of sweat under her nose. She sticks her tongue out, to taste their saltiness, and stretches to pin the wash to the drying line. Four pins, jeans are heavy when they’re wet. Next to the large basket of freshly washed laundry is a smaller one, inside of which are a pair of work gloves, a rusty trowel and pruning shears.

Over the top of the drying line she sees them, in Jonathan’s car. Kissing, oblivious to her standing thirty feet away. Nancy’s straddling Jonathan’s lap, and his hands are skimming lightly over her shirt. Under her shirt. Nancy lifts herself up, to get better access to

She should look away. She absolutely, well and truly should. She’s the mom who knocks. The mom who never snoops in her younger son’s room unless his life was, is or might once again be held hostage by literal monsters. The mother who leaves a jumbo box of condoms on her older son’s bed with a note: _These are expensive. But some things are worth spending money on. _Lord knows that girl is taking care of it. She’d never allow herself to get knocked up in high school and ruin her college plans, but she’ll be damned if a child of hers doesn’t offer to take responsibility.

Rather than turning away, she positions herself between two pairs of faded jeans and, clothespins clamped between her teeth, peeks through them, at them. Nancy shifts position and the horn trumpets - a sustained, tenor _blat_. She bites down harder on the pins, tastes splintery, unvarnished wood.

“Holy shit!” Nancy squawks and tumbles to the passenger side. Through the open windows she hears Jonathan laugh, hears him laugh_ out loud_. Before they see her she ducks down, turns toward the basket and pulls out another pair of jeans. Jonathan’s this time. The bottoms are frayed from where he steps on them, heels grinding in dirt that never fully comes out in the wash. She offered once to hem them, so he’s not always walking on them. He replied slowly, face suffused with disbelief, imparting crucial information he didn’t want her to miss. “Mom. No one hems _jeans_.”

She plucks at the ends, debating.

_No_.

Her children, like her, are late bloomers. For her, it was end of sophomore year, high school. Someone called her name, she looked up, and a boy was hovering near her. Soon after a second and a third. They told unfunny joke after unfunny joke until she capitulated and smiled at them. They asked her if she’d let them buy her something or drive her somewhere. Boys she’d known since she was a child but hadn’t seriously spoken to in years. One day she was playing with them, the next day she wasn’t. No adult told them to do this, they decided it amongst themselves. A line like she and Judy had in their bedroom, except this one manned by multiple troops on both sides.

Their attention baffled her. Her face had never been described as doting, accepting or alluring. _Attentive._ It had, on the other hand, regularly been described as confused, disagreeable and agitated. _Transparent._ As if having thoughts and questions, reflecting these thoughts and questions via her face was at worst, a character defect. At best, a bad habit she’d hopefully outgrow, given time and _maturity_.

Her decent enough figure somewhat made up for her face, though it was never in fashion, being neither hourglass housewife nor elongated and boyish. _Somewhat made up for her face_ because she was most comfortable when her body was hidden. Her mother sewed, darned and patched. She took in school clothes, simple dresses and skirts that were once Judy's, let them out as she grew. “Neat as a pin,” she said approvingly, pleased with the results of her handiwork. But as soon as her back was turned she slouched and scuffed, pulled and twisted until she was once again lost in her clothes, hair straggling out of its pins. 

“I don’t know how you do it,” mother huffed. “Your clothes, they’re like a tramp’s. Your hair, it’s like a gypsy’s. How do you…Why must you…Why can’t you…Such a stubborn, obstinate, _mulish_ girl. What’s going to become of you?”

If mother were alive, how disappointed she’d be with her home haircuts and wardrobe from the Army-Navy surplus store, clothes she no longer reserves for out-of-school time. “I like to be comfortable,” she told her, as if that sufficed for explanation. She still likes to be comfortable. These days, though, no one asks her to be different, not where her clothes are concerned. 

When the change came, she embraced it, embraced them. She was, not to put too fine a point on it, _bored. _With herself, her family, school and Hawkins. Gone for some time were the fascination and awe that simple things brought. Talking for hours with Jamie Coley about their life together running a horse farm; unnecessary to stipulate _no boys allowed_ they were so far off their radars. Fishing for crappie and panfish with her father, permitted small sips of beer, impaling worms and minnows on tender wire hooks. “The small ones, mind you, for small mouths.” Judy’s weekly washing and brushing of her hair, a third of the way down her back and _thick. _The space they used to fill was vast, and now vacant. Jamie moved away middle of freshman year, had not been replaced. Her father had slowed down even more, and Judy was tired from school and work, taking care of their parents and the house. She was old enough to manage her own hair.

She’d never been one for the straight and narrow: schoolwork, chores, church socializing. She didit all, it was expected of her, but never with enthusiasm. She forever needed a nudge, or a shove to do her duty. She felt awkward in groups, talked at length about subjects others joked about. Laughed when everyone else cried.

Animals were no longer as interesting as they used to be. Sitting at home with her parents, watching the television. Well. She had vague notions to train as a stewardess, travel the world. Become a weather girl on TV or move to Indianapolis and work in a shop. That had to be more interesting than working in a shop in Hawkins. What she really wanted, though, was to be a detective. A sleuth. Like Nancy Drew, the mysteries she relinquished upon entering high school but still went back to when she was restless, mind pacing, unable to sleep. She spun stories of how she’d be in charge, get in her car - she didn't know what make or model but it would be sharp and white, with butter brown seats - and drive for miles and miles, wherever she wanted. She'd make connections and solve problems no one realized were problems, that only she, with her instincts and vision noticed. Bess and George would listen to _her_.

“Nancy never gets a real job, does she,” Judy asked in her eminently practical manner, her not-actually-a-question way. “No one hires her to do the work full-time, do they? It’s her _hobby. S_he does it in-between classes, while getting good grades.”

But unexpectedly, fortuitously there was this. A different day, a different boy to lean against the wall with. (What wall? Any would do. Outside the gym or the church, the cinema or the diner. Stretched along the resting places of Hawkins’ bigwigs, the splintery walls of an abandoned barn weak with rot. Nose full of the smell of mice and moldy hay.) They stood close, but not too close. Enough to smell the after shave they didn’t need, the pomade in their hair, the musky scent of pit-stained shirts and unwashed skin, the mouthwash they’d swig in the bathrooms because they thought it would hide their sweet-and-sour whiskey breaths. With a flick flick and a hiss, a burst of orangey heat they’d light her cigarettes, better than a kiss.

Judy noticed the attention, her response to it. "It's time to show you how it's done." She instructed her to rest her weight on one leg and cock the other hip, place a hand on it. Demonstrated how she should sit with legs to the side, crossed neatly at the ankles. Place one hand on her knee while she twisted her body the other way, facing whomever she was speaking to.

“Sit up straight. Don’t slouch! Stop crunching your neck.”

Judy held her chin with a firm hand. “You’ve got a _strong_ jaw. And that nose. But your eyes, your smile. They’re good. They’re gold.”

She told her which side of her face to lead with (the left), how to arch her back so as to emphasize her breasts. She reached out one afternoon and, over her protests palpitated them medically - quick and firm. “They’re nice, Joyce. You should show them off more.” When she was bored or exasperated by her Judy made her run lines. Look up with wide, dewy eyes and _breathe_ not say, “That is fascinating_.”_ And, _“_It gives me the shivers, just to think about it. I don’t know how you could stand it. You’re so brave._” _And, “You’d do that? For me? Oh, I could squeeze you!”

She didn’t argue with her. She stuffed down her giggles, played up her big eyes, deftly dipped her chin and smiled. On command, she _cooed._ When big sisters shine their light on you, even ones only eighteen months older, you’re helpless, can’t help but flutter towards them. But in her secret heart she laughed at her. She didn’t need those silly tricks, Karen Champ plots and ploys. She only had to say what she thought, what she wanted and she had Hopp, John and Don wrapped tight round her fingers.

Not just them. Junior year there was Richard. From the beginning, different from the others. Not someone she grew up with, played in the woods with, got locked out of the house with. “Don’t come back till sundown now, y’hear.” His father bluff and hearty, adept with small talk, the owner of a chain of Southern Indiana grocery stores**. **His mother at home, decorative and alcoholic**. **She took regular, nebulous trips to Bloomington. “She loves the opera. They have a great conservatory.”His car a 1955 Eldorado: Aztec red with pointed tailfins, high and slender, and a white removable top. Twin, round taillights ran up the fenders. It had a hood that invited you to sit on it. Lie down on it. He swept down from his castle and picked her out of the crowd. Dazzled her with his white, square teeth and his white, round nails. His stories of life beyond Hawkins. “My brother's at IU, but for me WashU would be better, and Northwestern ideal.” In possession of a life that wasn’t will o’ the wisp thinking but fact, a book already written. He smelled of nothing but soap and laundry powder, with something warm and sweet underneath. It made her want to bite into him, claim a piece of it for herself.

The radio played something crooning, flimsily clothed suggestion. He lifted her up, though she didn’t need his help to perch on the hood, warm under her butt. He placed deliberate kisses - damp, a hint of tongue - on the middle of her palm, the fatty part between her wrist and thumb, behind her ear and along her neck. Unbuttoned the top button of her blouse while she giggled and pushed him away with a half-hearted “Stop! Someone might see and tell my parents, your parents…”

Half-hearted because she was wet, between her legs. If he wanted to do it right there, on top of the car, she would have made it happen, if for no other reason than to learn what _do it_ entailed. Aching to lose her virginity, but with no idea how and Richard was such a gentleman. What was school good for, in those days: raising a blue-winning cow, cooking corn eight ways, reading a pattern in Ladies Home Journal. Romance novels stolen from the library were equally useless: heaving bosoms and chests, abductions and _no no no no no yes_. Dialogue that made her giggle and frown. Judy, her last hope, refused to show her how to take the lead. Her only answer, “You don’t know what to do? You are beyond help. The thing goes between your legs. Down there!” No additional details forthcoming because she had only the vaguest idea, herself. It was years before she admitted her ignorance to her.

Richard told her exactly what her self-absorbed seventeen year old self, adrift on a sea of hormones, wanted to hear. “You’re not like those other girls, worried what people say, what they think. You’re independent, think for yourself, say what you mean. You’re an _original_, Joyce. One of a kind.” He had a wide, pale forehead. A confident smile that invited her to share in his good fortune. A pelt of dark brown hair swept back from his eyes, except for a single errant curl that she constantly smoothed into place, but only because it gave her an excuse to touch him.

"People say I resemble the Kennedy brothers," he boasted. Fool that she was, she agreed with him.

"You're more Bobby than Jack, for sure."

Over time - in retrospect not very much time, in the moment it felt longer - her originality wore on him. He found everything she said, especially her jokes, less and less charming. Her words, "your notions," were so much bigger than her deeds, well beyond her station in life. His smiles grew benevolent**.** Distant.

“You didn’t really mean what you said back there, about women working?” She looked at him, and he hastily added, “I mean, of course women can work. They do work, as teachers, nurses, secretaries, cashiers, bank clerks and such. It’s only right. But doing a man’s work. Really? Is that what you want?”

“Women in my family have always done the man’s work. You don’t think those pigs slaughtered themselves, do you?” She said it in jest. It had been some time since anyone in her family raised livestock, and never pigs. “Too much work for us old folks.” The Depression and the land parceled out in bits and bites to those who could still afford to work it. The War and the smokeless powder plant in Charlestown where mother worked for a time, leaving her and Judy first with Aunt Darlene, then a series of neighbors - the Mellotts, the Riggs, the Breezes - who for years afterward reminded her of their deeper connection. "Your poor Aunt. She tried, but you were itty bitty girls. Always getting into things. Couldn't take my eyes off you for more than a minute. You know how distracted she gets."

After the War, her parents drove trucks, delivered goods, served on the custodial staff at the new hospital. Worked for others and there was nary a chicken or a rabbit or a milk cow to take care of. Despite years of Judy and her begging and pleading, solemnly swearing that they were responsible and would take good care of her, not the meanest nag for the two of them to jog around the neighbors' fields on.

Richard didn’t respond with a laugh, a “Ha!” as confusion shifted into amused comprehension. Quite the opposite.

After that they parted. Not amicably exactly, but with the gradual exhale of a balloon leaking air. A melancholy reminder of good times that have come and gone. Best stomped on and thrown in the trash, but through inertia allowed to drift slowly towards the ground. One of the handful of times that’s happened in the cautionary tale that is her life. 

She bet Richard voted for Tricky Dick, when he was old enough. The cowardly, conservative, hypocritical shit.

After that, after him she didn’t decide boys her age were no longer acceptable. She decided, a rush of adolescent certitude, boys from _Hawkins_ were no longer acceptable. Her mistake was to believe any of them had the capacity to make life less monotonous, more meaningful. To bring to it surprise and excitement. If Richard, with his car and his money, his college and post-college plans didn’t think differently from regular Hawkins folks, what hope were the rest? Better to burn that bridge, set fire to the temptation to retrace her steps. No more Don, Hopper, or John. Certainly no Bob. Bob with his interest in technology, his impassioned talk of the space race and the possibility of life on other planets, the urgency with which he spoke about the need to “improve Hawkins’ science program” and “keep up with the Soviets” - oblivious of, or perhaps simply unconcerned with the laughter around him. He was never under consideration. He was like Will’s friends, and she wasn’t. That mattered so much, in her school days.

She didn't say it out loud, for fear of jinxing it. Kept quiet even around Judy. Who might have been, she sees with the benefit of distance, sympathetic to her way of thinking and, when the time came, talked her off the ledge. (Though how can she think that, when so much good came out of the bad?) She kept an eye out for boys new in town, from out of town. Boys who didn’t simply pretend to be above Hawkins and its ways, but followed up their words with actions. They'd grown up somewhere else and were stuck here: seething, counting the days until they could be set free. In the meanwhile, raising hell.

Not immediately, but not long afterwards she found Lonnie. Lean and muscled, with what they used to call _bedroom eyes_. (“I don’t know,” Hopp said, jealous but accepting they were "only friends, good friends." “Rat’s eyes, that’s what I’d call ‘em.”) A put-on air of sulky menace that promised trouble and made her insides buzz. Lonnie with his slicked back hair and rolled up sleeves. He took her ideas seriously, told her to dream big. For him she wore short skirts and mini-dresses. He knew what _do it_ meant, what it really meant, and finally she did too. He sang to her. “Whoah, the girl I love, she got long black wavy hair/I do declare!/The girl I love, yeah, she got long black wavy hair…”

Her senior year, high on this love, she was ready to drop out of school. Judy said “absolutely not.” Post-graduation she worked, not as a stewardess or a weather girl, in Indianapolis or St. Louis, not even in Hawkins as a vet's or a horse-trainer's assistant. But as a waitress at a mom and pop truck stop diner two towns over. It was the first job she held. It was what she did to justify moving out of the house and marrying Lonnie before she was twenty. She was ready to make her own decisions. They were going places.She was a big girl, now.

She was more than thirty, with two kids when she first heard 4th of July, Asbury Park_._ _Oh, love me tonight and I promise I'll love you forever/Oh, I mean it, Sandy, girl. _Heard Rosalita. _Papa's on the corner, waitin' for the bus/Mama, she's home in the window, waitin' up for us/She'll be there in that chair when they wrestle her upstairs, 'cause you know we ain't gonna come/I ain't here on business, baby, I'm only here for fun/And Rosie, you're the one._

Of course. Nothing more than a man who will never stop being mad at his daddy, the ones who got away, the world. A man who can’t think further than finding a sweet thing to fuck under the boardwalk, will never get past the need to blow out of town in his Chevy while he gives everyone the middle finger.

What the hell was she thinking?

She’s on her knees in the dirt, face buried in a pile of Summer Breeze scented laundry when Jonathan turns the key in the ignition. The car wheezes and protests, wheezes and protests before rumbling to reluctant life. Jonathan crooks his elbow on the window. She hears “Hey, don’t insult…” and fills in the rest. “My baby. She’s old, not that pretty anymore, but she’s reliable. Good for another ten thousand, another thirty thousand miles if I treat her right.”

He and Nancy pull out of the driveway. She’s alone.

Gardening will have to wait for a better day. She pins the rest of the clothes to the line and takes the empty basket inside. Walks to the bathroom, shuts the door and locks it; slumps on the closed toilet seat and presses her face into her hands. If she had more energy she’d strip and turn on the shower, huddle on the floor and cry. Wail and sob, pound her fists, her head against the tile as the warm water cascades - masking, facilitating her tears. She hasn’t done that in ages, doesn’t know if she’s capable any more of letting go like that. She limits herself to a sigh. The gusty sigh, practically a groan, she allows herself when the house is empty.

Maine, of course, is a girl’s dream, hopeful and pastel. That doesn’t mean she’s forgotten what it stands for. Bob put a bug in her ear, the idea that she and her boys could leave Hawkins. When years ago Lonnie suggested the same it was preposterous. What would she do, in another town, in a _city_. She had her job at Melvald’s, and it wasn’t a good job but it was a steady one. It gave her a budget she could work within, a frail sense of security. It's not like she could have relied on Lonnie to bring home a steady, sufficient paycheck. To be at home. 

“C’mon Joyce. You always said you wanted to get out of this dump. Travel. That’s one of the things I loved about you, that you wanted something different, something better for yourself and for us.” She didn’t miss his use of the past tense. Nor the way he refused to understand that it was easy to want more for yourself when you didn’t have children.

Yet here she is, contemplating big changes as her Hawkins born and bred children, ignorant of everything but small town Midwest life and fighting monsters, are both about to be in high school. Simple common sense, reading the writing on the mall. The coal mines and family farms continue to trickle away. The tire factory that promised to employ the miners and farmers hasn't. “We need well educated folks, ones who are well versed in their reading and writing, their math and well…” Currently she’s behind the counter at a hardware store on a fast emptying street, a dozen customers on a good day, Wal-Mart a short drive away. “Their selection, their prices, Joyce. I wish I could help, but they can’t be beat.”

She’s not dreaming big. She’s conducting triage. 

By design and habit she’s close-mouthed, but she’d like to talk to someone. Where to go, how to go, when to go. Intentionally and not, she’s surrounded herself with men and boys with their own agendas. Men and boys who want her to keep on keeping on here in Hawkins, though it’s done nothing but grind her finer and finer. She’s not a poker or a sword. She’s far more brittle, a knife made of bone. Bang her on the corner of the table, at just the right angle and she’ll splinter into a hundred, a thousand pieces.

Is she too old to make a new female friend or two? If only she hadn’t fallen out with Judy all those years ago about Lonnie’s treatment of her and the kids. Judy, whose parting words to her were a lecture. “Admit you made a mistake, Joyce. You’re stupid and human like the rest of us. You’re not better than us. Don’t double down, act like this is what you wanted all along. Stop pretending you don’t crave what the rest of us do: stability, security, safety. Love. An opportunity for someone else to shoulder your burdens, even for a day at a time.”

She doesn’t have the gumption, the energy to call her. Is too fragile to reach out and risk rejection, put up with: _Now what’s happened._ _You can’t be serious. I told you so._ After Hawkins was in the news - after they were in the news, _The Boy Who Came Back To Life_ \- she waited for a letter, a phone call that never arrived. Received in lieu of it missives from the insane, the conspiracy theorists, the lonely and the saved. These days, they have an unlisted number. Last she heard Judy was in South Carolina. Married still, hopefully. Teaching still, perhaps. With children of her own.

Those shellacked, nested dolls and the unimaginative Hawkins folks who place them neatly behind glass, content to live their straight and narrow, dollhouse lives. Perhaps they have the right idea. Perhaps they’re blessed, to not see what she does.

Because while economic, financially practical thoughts can be put off for another month, laughed off as two a.m. terror, there's still the prickle along the back of her neck. It won’t leave her alone. _Go_ it says. _Make the change before it makes you_.

*

A rainy Sunday morning. Another Sunday morning she is not at work. They no longer open the shop on Sundays. “It’ll pick up, when the weather gets better,” Artie Melvald predicts. “Foot traffic from the park will help.” She waggles her head side to side in sympathy. Doesn't mention that mall walking is popular with retired folks and mothers whose children aren’t old enough to get around town by themselves.

Will is drawing at the kitchen table. Jonathan is in his room. "Nancy’s stopping by later." By that he means, _she snuck out my window this morning, not particularly sneakily, is having breakfast with her parents and is coming back, where she will spend the rest of the day, then return home for dinner, pretend to go to bed and promptly come back here to spend the night._

_Tap tap. _She knocks before she has an opportunity to change her mind. 

He’s in his study clothes, washed thin navy sweats and a t-shirt sporting a naked male torso that he most definitely didn’t purchase in Hawkins. The first time she sees it, she tells him not to wear it to school. “And upset the delicate sensibilities of Tommy, Billy, Bobby, Duane, Travis and every other red-blooded Hawkins male? Wouldn’t dream of it.” He turns off the tape player and removes his headphones, sends a quick smile in her direction before turning back to his book. “What’s up.” A greeting, not a question.

“Just saying hello.” His room is murky and stuffy. Those sheets pinned over the windows need to be taken down and washed, the windows opened and the glass given a good scrubbing. She heads straight for his bed and peers under it. Retrieves the plates and glasses toed out of sight who knows how long ago and makes a stack of them, places them near the head of his hastily-made bed. She picks dirty underwear and socks off the floor and adds them to the small mountain next to his laundry basket. He hardly looks up from his textbook as he gives her a token, “Mom, I can do that myself. I was just about to do that.”

His chair is hidden under clothes, books and records, almost empty bags of potato chips and popcorn, eight by eleven manila envelopes stuffed with photographs, smaller envelopes packed with negatives. She gives the bed a dubious once over and gingerly perches at the end of it. The mattress sags toward the floor. Jonathan's hair is short. She can see the top of his spine, the curve of his ears, the delicate, pale skin along the back of his neck. She's not used to it.

“You and Nancy,” she starts and stops. She hasn’t thought through why she’s here, what she wants from this conversation, but she has Jonathan’s attention: a half-turn in her direction, expression neutral but wary.

“Me and Nancy,” he echoes.

“You’re very close, things are good.”

He visibly softens, his eyes light up. He immediately looks younger, unguarded and boyish. “Yeah.” Then mortified, pink staining high on his cheekbones. “Mom, this isn’t necessary. We’re not stupid. I saw what you left me, on the bed. You don’t have to worry. I absolutely don’t need a lecture about this. I’m seventeen.”

“No,” she says. “Other children, possibly.” She might emphasize the _children_ a little, enough for him to notice. “Not you two, though. You’re both very responsible…” 

He and Nancy are less bratty, self-centered teenagers than oddly mature seventeen year olds running as fast as they can towards independence and responsibility, unwilling to admitthey’ve got years and years, too many years to be adults and so few to be young. Will understands, but he’s always been an old soul. She wishes Jonathan would slow down. She’s told him as much. He responded with a crisp, “I’m fine with the way I am, Mom.” As if she was the one who needed reassurance.

Mollified, he turns back to his work. He flips through his textbook, picks up his pen and takes down a note; taps out an abstracted, four finger rhythm. She pulls her sweater over her wrists, wiggles her hands into the opposite sleeves and scratches her elbows. It helps her focus.

“Do you spend a lot of time at the Wheelers?” How does she not know the answer to this question?

He hums in the negative. “A little bit, sure. Nancy, though, likes it more over here. Which works for me, her parents are kind of…” He trails off. Hunches his shoulders and stares fixedly at his book, vainly hoping she wasn’t paying attention. Worried that his implication that Ted and Karen are less than exemplary constitutes a betrayal.

“What? What were you going to say?” Once again a half-turn towards her, skeptical but tempted. “Tell me!” With a roll of his eyes (_Gossip. How tawdry. If you insist, but you won’t like this as much as you think you will…_) he relents.

“They’re like you and Dad were for all those years: seething at each other, bringing us into your misery. Nothing is right, will ever be good again. Of course, they’re more _discreet_ about it. Middle class. The children mustn’t know. Pretending in the morning, at breakfast, that their late night arguments and hurled wine glasses weren’t heard by everyone. That Nancy and Mike don’t notice the sometimes passive aggressive but more of the time aggressive way they talk to each other.” It’s unpleasant to hear, but he’s earned the right to say it. “Though even Holly knows what the situation is, and Nancy and Mike hardly care if their parents stay together, would prefer they end it.” He shrugs, pantomiming his indifference, Nancy and Mike’s indifference. Teenagers’ indifference to the lives of the adults who love them.

“We Byers have always been straightforward, hung our laundry - dirty and clean - where everyone can see it,” and one corner of his mouth quirks up in appreciation and agreement.

_Speaking of straightforward conversations. _She could mention her job, their house, their bills. This town, this fucking town.

“Yes. The Wheelers have always been very comfortable. Proper. Though everyone knows that Ted Wheeler…” Her face crumples. Jonathan doesn’t need to know this.

“What? Ted Wheeler what?” He pushes away from his desk, turns to fully face her. “Do you know something? About Nancy’s dad?”

Her nose twitches in apology. “It’s nothing. Don’t mind me. I’m being catty. You know the silly rumors you hear, when you’re working the register. People never realize that just because they can’t see me, doesn’t mean I can’t hear them.”

Jonathan’s forehead crinkles, his eyebrows arch into wings of disbelief, but he doesn’t push her. He doesn’t especially want information he’d be obligated to share with Nancy.

“I know my standards are super low for what constitutes acceptable fatherly behavior, but Mr. Wheeler could be much worse. It’s not deliberate. He just…doesn’t know better? Doesn’t know there are other ways of being? It’s like the world is spinning faster, and he’s been knocked down, can’t get up.”

Ted, lying at the bottom of the basement stairs next to his walker and cane. _Help!_ She giggles. Her laugher is followed by sparks of indignation.

“Has he been mean to you? Said something rude?”

“Mom, what is this about?” Jonathan is no longer impatiently, sympathetically holding his peace; the bemused expression he defaults to as she meanders her way to her point replaced with mild irritation and growing suspicion. “Nancy and I have been together for months, and you’ve never said anything to me other than I’d better be treating her right. Never asked anything besides if I’m happy and this is what I want.”

It comes out before she has a chance to calibrate her words.

“It’s just that Nancy’s grown up a certain way. She’s had everything handed to her, not had to work for it, struggle for it.”

“_Mom_.”

“I’m sorry.” She shakes her head, exasperated with herself. She’s capable of, if not subtlety, than at least speaking to her own children without infuriating them, stopping them from listening. “That came out wrong.”

What does she wish someone had told her, when she was seventeen?

\- She’s so certain everything will work out for her, but it won’t.

\- Well, it many ways it will, but not in the way she thinks.

\- She is positive she knows who she is and what she wants out of life,

\- but years later she’ll look back and laugh at herself, _cringe_ at herself, at her certainty that was in fact naïveté.

\- Her family is the most important thing in the entire world, and she shouldn’t be so quick to give them up.

The last one she doesn’t have to say to Jonathan. She’s managed, if nothing else, to teach him that. The rest are sermons - truisms, homilies and platitudes that make no sense from his vantage point. She’ll sound preacherly, and he’ll dismiss her. He’s waiting her out, though, with the steady, opaque face he reserves for others. Despite her better judgment, she finds herself moving forward.

“You and Nancy are…different, really different.”

“You’re right,” he interrupts. “She’s a lot like you.”

From another child that might sound odd. Perhaps it still does.

“Not like that. Don’t make this weird, when it’s not. I mean that Nancy knows when she’s right, and doesn’t let anyone stop her or condescend to her, tell her she’s wrong. _Crazy_. You should give her a chance.” Arms crossed, Jonathan pauses and ducks his head, forgetting there is nothing to hide behind. He frowns, grimaces, releases disparaging weighty breaths. Unable to contain his exasperation he shifts hard in his seat, cracks his knuckles and stops himself from chewing on a fingernail. She doesn’t look away. Resists the urge to sink deeper into her sweater, pull it over her face until only her eyes are showing. Make a silly face to break the tension and change the subject. Like she did when he was eleven.

“If you talked to Nancy, had a real conversation with her instead of saying hello and then _smiling vaguely_, like you’re wondering where you’ve left your keys, you’d see how much you have in common.”

“She’s a lovely girl. I’ve always thought that. But you don’t know how she’ll react when she meets with resistance,” she says weakly. “The Wheelers. They’re not like us. You said it, they don’t even fight like us.” She tries for levity, but Jonathan doesn’t laugh.

“Nancy’s nothing but a fighter. She knows what she wants, and she goes for it. She already had Steve eating out of her hand and she dumped him. For _me_.”

His frown deepens to a scowl. “Does that surprise you? That someone like Nancy wants me?”

“Of course not!” she protests._ She’s lucky to have you. I don’t know if she deserves you. Slow down, don’t lose yourself. _The words stick in her craw, but she hopes he can see them reflected in her eyes, her smile. 

“It’s…you’re very young. You’ve got so much time, and you never know what’ll happen. If Hawkins. If we’re always going to be…”

If he were paying more attention he’d pick up on her incomplete thought; but she’s made him angry. He’s in a self-righteous fury, all wounded male pride. Unable to see past his own story, one that he’d laugh at other people for telling: the loner and the princess, the poor boy and the rich girl. As if he can read her mind he says, ominously, “It might all go to hell. East side West side, wrong side of the tracks, Lonnie Byers’ kid shouldn’t expect too much. This is just a fleeting teenage romance?” Finally he smiles at her, though there’s no warmth within it. “Like Judd Nelson and Molly Ringwald, hmmm?”

She has no idea what he’s talking about. She nods cautiously in agreement. The wrong response. Jonathan snorts, frustration and disdain.

“How could I forget. Bad enough I hear it at school. The pervert with the camera.” Guilt and fear flash across his face, there’s something he hasn’t told her, but he rushes on. “Even you, you’re supposed to be on my side, but you don’t trust me to make my own decisions, know what’s good for me. Got to know my place, right?”

“She’s got you interning at the Hawkins Post!” she says heatedly. She’s digging bruises into her own forearms. “You had to give up your better paying job for that!”_ We need that money. We need it more than ever. You know this. You walk the same streets I do. _

They’re only a few feet apart but he rolls his chair closer, the better to shout at her. “How am I going to get into college when my after school activity is short order cook? It’s not like stupid Hawkins High has a paper anymore, anything formal I can attach my name to. What should I tell admissions? That I photograph prom, the middle school dance for twenty five bucks? Do you really think I can use that as my portfolio? Do you know what other kids are putting on their applications? Music recitals they’ve given, class president, perfect SAT scores, captain of the basketball team, the track team, the _lacrosse_ team; summer classes at University of Chicago; summers abroad where they perfect their French or Spanish while they dig wells and help those _less fortunate_ than them.” No need to say the rest, and he never would.

She’s taken aback, not that he’s been worrying and planning, but that this is the first time she’s hearing the specifics. “You never mentioned this before. Why are you only telling me now?”

He half snorts, half sighs at her question. “You haven’t asked, not for a while. And if I didn’t say anything, it’s because I didn’t want to bother you. You had so much going on. With Will.” He hesitates. “With Bob.”

Anger spent, he slumps in his chair and studies a point past her left ear. She keeps her eyes on him, biting her tongue, wishing she could touch him, hug him but fearing he’ll push her away. There’s a dry-sour taste in her mouth. It’s not guilt, nor is it anger or fear. She sucks on it and casts around for the word.

Regret.

“You’re worrying about stuff that hasn’t happened, that won’t happen. You don’t do that any more. Not where I’m concerned, at least.” For a moment he looks disgusted, that he spoke the words out loud, showed his soft underbelly. Then, resolute. “But I’m old enough to take care of myself.”

“You are wrong. I _do_ worry about you, think about you all the time. And I’m not exaggerating or being _anxious._ This isn’t…an elevator phobia. I’m not worried that lightning’s going to hit our house, not panicking that I left the stove on. I’m saying this because I’m your mother, and I have experience with these things. You need to think of yourself. Think about _your_ future. What _you_ want. Not what Nancy wants for you.”

“I _am_ thinking about myself and what’s to come. Maybe that’s what’s bothering you. That I’m planning for life away from Hawkins. I can’t stay here forever. You used to remember that.”

“I love you, Mom” he says, as she’s mustering a response, “but I’m not you. I want something different, something more with my life.” He says it with the firmness of a jury foreman delivering a verdict. He’s made up his stubborn, seventeen year old mind. The time for arguments is over. If she doesn’t like what she’s being told, she should have made a better case for herself.

He stares her down: territorial, comfortable. Unwilling to defer to her in a way he wouldn’t be if she’d chosen a better location. To say something now would be nothing but vindictive, asserting control she lost some time ago. That she never had in the first place.

She makes a show of smoothing her pant legs, flicking dust off them. Casts a critical eye over his room before she slowly stands and picks up the stack of dirty dishes she placed on the bed. She’s not retreating. She’s living to fight another day.

“As long as we understand each other.”

“Can you shut the door on your way out.”

She walks slowly. She’s had so much practice, leaving rooms with her head held high, pretending a stalemate, a skeptical, soothing bum’s rush - “I’ll get back to you, Joyce” - is what she was aiming for in the first place. Before she’s left the room, Jonathan’s unplugged his headphones, turned the tape player back on and raised the volume to nine.

She stands outside his door. Presses her forehead against it and lets his music - loud, angry, unfamiliar, atypical - wash over her. 

Thinks about Jonathan at two: blond hair and plump cheeks, the pacifier she clipped to his shirt, not that it did any good he lost at least one a week. The epic tantrums he threw when it was time for bed, how long and hard he slept when he was finally down. At six, how he danced to the radio: Bang-a-Gong, Saturday in the Park, Dancing in the Moonlight and Ramblin’ Man. “I’m a turtle,” he said. Will on the couch, sunk in the boneless sleep of babies learning to walk. “Is this how turtles dance? It is, isn’t it?” He hunched into a C, bent his knees and jiggled his butt from side to side, a very lively turtle. ”What about pandas? How do they dance? Like this I think. You try it now!” The change in atmosphere when he joined Will on the sofa and noodled with his blanket. Humidity dropping, clouds clearing, nothing in the sky but a gentle, nectarine sun balanced on the horizon for a perfect, silent moment - bathing her in its light. His kid brain had wound down for the evening. His parasitic energy no longer leaked everywhere, sapping her strength. He turned inward, traveled to dimensions and universes she wasn’t allowed access to, until sleep took him over completely and she was left finally, finally with only the sound of her own breathing, her own lack of thought.

She smoked a joint on the porch afterwards and waited for Lonnie to come home: the swing new, chains shiny, paint smooth; one foot planted, the other curled under her, rocking and rocking. She wondered how drunk or bellicose he'd be, if he'd require shushing and cosseting, a quick fuck before he went inside. _Three children_ she thought, through her haze of exhaustion. _Mustn’t forget the biggest one._

Instead of telling Jonathan her thoughts and plans, treating him like the adult he practically is, she’s picking at what’s made him happier than he’s been in ages, in his entire life. Dredging up her past, making needless, heedless comparisons and using them as justification to twist the knife. 

She didn’t know how fast a parent, how fast _she_ could go from knowledgeable to ignorant, to a stranger if she stopped paying attention and putting the time in. They were never lock-step, one following the other following the other. What they had was better - all aware of each other, pulling in the same direction, taking care of each other.

When did it change?

There’s been too much to focus on, even for her. She’s been looking all around her and has lost track. Thinking about the future and what could be. Thinking about the past and what was. Missing what’s right in front of her and what is. It’s not the first time. 

It was a blur, after Will. Three felt like twice as many. Next time she looked up Jonathan was nine: a rat-tail that scraggled between his shoulder-blades, legs like popsicle sticks. He was twelve: hair shorter but still in his eyes, unwashed and refusing to acknowledge that stink in his bedroom came from his own body. Eerily self-contained and full of uncoordinated, fearful anger.

“Fancies himself the man of the house, mama’s little protector, hm?” There she was, asked to choose between them, putting herself between them. Will cowered and cringed, scurried to his room as Lonnie stormed and raged and Jonathan glowered and tried to make himself look bigger, sound older, seem less frightened than he was. “Always taking their side!” Lonnie yelled. “What about the two of us? What about what I want?”

“They’re _children_! Of course I do. We should both be taking their side! It’s the four of us now, Lonnie! It’s been the four of us for years, when the hell are you going to realize that?” Not wanting to make the decision she knew she had to. She’d never been on her own, went straight from her parents’ house to Lonnie’s, and for all her big dreams had so little to offer. And the sweetness, she wouldn’t let herself forget the sweetness that was there once, that cropped up like warm days in January, wildflowers in February and still had the ability to take her breath away. Until those moments were so rare and fleeting that she finally made the decision she had to.

Afterwards. _Why did it take me so long to do what was right?_ _Why did I think I couldn’t handle life on my own? Why did I think that was what I, what my children deserved?_

She doesn’t want to make that mistake again. She won’t make that mistake again.

**Author's Note:**

> The t-shirt Jonathan is wearing is the cover of The Smiths' first album: [The Smiths](https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-smiths-mw0000198866), released February 1984. 
> 
> "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" and "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" are Bruce Springsteen, _The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle_, released in 1973.
> 
> "The Girl I Love She Got Long, Wavy Hair" is a 1969 Led Zeppelin cover of a 1920 blues recording by Sleepy John Estes, done for the BBC Sessions. Would Lonnie know this song? Absolutely not. But I couldn't resist. If S1 Jonathan can know about The Smiths before their time, why not this? 
> 
> A little bit about the Merchant Marine and their role in WWII can be found [here](https://americanhistory.si.edu/onthewater/exhibition/6_3.html).
> 
> Next up: Will and El! Will and Jonathan! In their new home. 85-90% less heart-achey. I promise.


End file.
